Sunday, May 5, 2013

Highbury - a Place to Enter into Christian Mission

Highbury is a place to

Share Christian Friendship

Explore Christian Faith and

Enter into Christian Mission

With Christ at the centre

And open to all

Mention the word ‘mission’ and it is very
easy to split it up. There’s the mission
we are about as a church that’s at the centre of all we do – that involves
sharing our Christian faith with other people around us. That’s one thing.

And then there’s mission that focuses on
the other side of the world – and the inclination is to identify needy, poor
parts of the world that we can help – and so mission involves us in doing
things for them over there.

Think that way and that means we should be
concerned for two things – mission and outreach on our doorstep and support
mission further afield.

One of the things that’s happened in the
last forty years is that the thinking of what mission is has changed.

We no longer support ‘a missionary
society’, we are part of a partnership of churches engaged in mission. That partnership we know as the Council for World Mission.

CWM’s vision is encapsulated in their strap line.

The Council for World Mission is a worldwide community of Christian
churches committed to sharing their resources of money, people, skills and
insights globally to carry out God’s mission locally.

We are a partnership of equals, all of whom
are engaged in mission locally and all of whom can draw on resources globally
to make that mission more effective.

I think we caught a glimpse of that vision working out in practice here in
Highbury last Thursday afternoon.

This year is the bi-centenary of the birth
of David Livingstone. He grew up at a
time when there was a passion to spread the Christian faith all over the
world. Joining up with the London
Missionary Society he took the Christian Gospel to Africa
and came to be regarded as one of the great 19th Century
Missionaries. In this country his work
has often been called into question. In
Malawi
his name is highly honoured to this day.
A couple of months ago, President
Joyce Banda, President of Malawi, visited this country to mark that
bi-centenary.

The Federation has built up links with our
partners in Malawi, the
Churches of Christ: we received a visit from Candi who had been part of a team
going from our Federation churches to Malawi last year.

Three people from the Malawi churches
are over here this year to join us in our Federation churches for a short
while. It was great to meet them on
Thursday afternoon.

As the conversation developed it became
clear that we were not involved in that mistaken idea that because we have
links with Malawi
we must therefore be in a mindset where we are looking for ways we can do
something for them.

They had questions they wanted to ask of us
and of our experience as churches.

We in turn asked them about their
situation.

One of the team that had gone over to Malawi was hosting the three who are staying in
Witney, Nana, and she early on in the conversation commented on the way the
team had been struck by the way in which the churches of Malawi were
facing similar problems to our churches.

In our conversation that too became
apparent.

Malawi
has a massive poverty – at first sight you may think a very different
situation.

But they too are part of the globalisation
of the world, they too have problems similar to ours.

How does the church respond in what it does
in a rapidly changing world. It was a
big issue for them how to pass on the faith that was so important to them to
children growing up in the churches who become disenchanted and move away. How to move in their worship to meet the
changing needs of their youngsters.

We came to the end of our conversation and
we asked them to sum up their vision for their churches at the moment and what
they would want to share.

Interestingly Master, the Head from one of
their schools who had been fascinating and humbling to listen to as he spoke of
schools with hardly any teaching resources and classes of 200, asked Alice and
Nellie to share their views.

First Alice
spoke … and she spoke of the way their churches need to focus on the power of
prayer, the power of prayer to make a difference. She went on to speak of the need for their
churches to capture the vision of mission, sharing their faith in ways that
spoke to the generation of today.

And then Alice shared her thoughts. She spoke of the need to find people in their
churches who would think of themselves as empowering others to engage in the
work of mission, or prayer, the need to find people who would enable, empower,
people throughout the churches to fulfil their potential and to release their
gifts.

Three simple thoughts.

And what struck me is exactly what had
struck Nana, that we are in this together.
Partners.

We were sharing in those few moments
insights into the problems facing us … and I felt they put their finger on
something so important.

That morning I had prepared the outline of
this morning’s service. I had chosen to
home in on those first 11 verses of Acts.
And within those verses I had chosen to home in on Acts 1:8 so that this
Sunday, today, we could focus on the next line of our church’s vision – that
Highbury be a place to enter into Christian mission.

They are the parting words of Jesus and
they come at a particular moment.

“You
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of
the earth.”

Our task is to be witnesses – to tell
others of the difference Christ makes to each one of us, the difference he
makes in our families, the difference he makes in our world. It matters.

Start where we are with whoever are around
us. Then we spread out. And we have no limits.

It’s a wonderful image of the pebble tossed
in a pool and the ripples spreading out.
It prompted me to think of mission as those ripples spreading out into
the world.

We each of us are witnesses and we do not
know what impact our witness will have or where it might reach.

Toss a pebble in a pond

Watch the ripples as they
spread

See the centre of those
circles

Feel the impact far and near

Sense the love of Christ
within you

Share the love of Christ
without

See yourself as that pebble

Watch the ripples as they
spread

Little things that make a
difference

Whether spoken or enacted

From a centre deep in Jesus

Make an impact far and near.

This is exactly the priority that our
friend Nellie identified – that we must share our faith –and have a passion to
share that faith in our mission and outreach.
It starts with our children – as we long to see them grow up and catch
for themselves this thing this faith this sprit of God that makes such a
difference.

It’s something we cannot do on our
own. The passage begins by reminding
those witnesses that they will be able to do it because they can draw on a
power, a strength that comes from God.
The holy Spirit.

That’s the strength we have to draw on …
and that strength is released by prayer.

Prayer was the second thing that she said
was so important.

At the end of our conversation we had a
time of prayer. It was Nellie who prayed
for us. Her prayer was most moving. By way of explanation she said she would pray
in part in her own language. She
prayed with a fervour and as she moved from the English we understood to the
language she knew her spirit was aroused and as she had explained at the start
it did not matter that we did not recognise the words – God knew. And she was praying for us – the phrase
‘Sunday school’ slipped in – a loan word we recognised – a hint of the focus of
her prayer. But we didn’t need the
hint. WE knew the power in prayer.

It felt almost an instance of that
experience when those followers of Jesus sensed the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit on that first Day of Pentecost and had that power within them – there
were so many different languages around on the streets that day and yet
everyone understood what was going on.

Our prayer time had that feel to it.

And of course in the experience of those
first followers of Jesus that’s what happened next. They continued to meet together in that upper
room where they ‘devoted themselves to prayer’.

It’s so key.

This is what we are about. Here’s a model for us to be church in the way
God calls us to be.

Wonderful connections were being made in my
mind. Things coming together.

We said Good bye to our new found friends
from Malawi – Felicity and I
will be meeting up with them again at the Assembly in Kent next
weekend.

And then on
Thursday evening we went into our Church Meeting where we were sharing
the latest in our plans for re-shaping our church life. The main part of the meeting involved going
into groups so that the Deacons could share with other people the thinking we
had been doing on those six areas of church life and the need for us to
identify people in the church family to be Ministry leaders.

A number of people after the meeting spoke of the way there had been something
of an enthusiasm that was special – John Lewis it was who said how important it
was and wanted to share his thoughts and so prompted us to get the Deacons
together after this morning’s service to compare notes.

It’s been important to work thorugh the
documents. Getting the job descriptions
in place means we have worked through and got a feel for what it is we are
looking for.

I now feel it’s time almost to put those
documents to one side

It was our other friend who put her finger
on what was so important. I introduced
the church meeting with my summary of what had been said. Afterwards Felicity commented to me that she
had heard it slightly differently.

Alice had spoken of the need to find people in our churches in Malawi and also
here who are the kind of people who empower other people to release their
gifts. Maybe that’s the key. Never mind the job descriptions – they give
us an idea of what we are seeking. But
more importantly is that we have people in church who are going to empower all
of us to release those gifts God has given us.

What a wonderful thought.

And it’s an insight shared with us in such
a timely way by friends from the other side of the world – a true spirit of
partnership.

Shaping our Church for tomorrow

Our sermons on Sunday mornings are exploring the way we can make that a reality.

Mapping the Church of the Future

As we re-shape the life of our church and dream dreams for the future of Highbury we are reading through Acts on Sunday evenings. Our series of sermons with the title 'Mapping the Church of the Future' is a 21st Century view of Acts.